Choosing a name for your website

If you’re like me, you’ll often first judge a website or application based on it’s name, so it’s important that your name is easily recognizable.

In more than one industry, the market leader is the company which has the most memorable name, rather than the best product.

Have you noticed that a lot of market leaders don’t have names which relate to their market at all? When you want to buy a book, you go to amazon.com rather than books.com, to search the web you would go to google.com, not search.com. I’m sure there are many more examples you can think of.

If you want your name to be recognizable I suggest sticking to these rules:

Keep it short, 2-4 syllables is perfect.

Make sure it’s easy to spell, and avoid using words that are spelt differently in other countries.

Domain names like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia aren’t easy to remember, so I would avoid using them.